The Spiritual Offspring of Martine Bertereau
by scillio
Summary: Your mother, in her own words, raised one harlot but no fools. You're not going to trust Tim Shepard, no matter how long his hair gets.


"Do I wanna get _married_?"

"Yep."

He's grinning that shit-eating grin, daring you to bring up the fact that you haven't so much as laid eyes on him in six months, so what the hell he thinks he's doing slinking around the corner with a cigarette between his lips and a half-assed proposal is beyond the ken of mere mortals. But you don't. You don't intend to give him the satisfaction.

"I'm sorry, but don't you believe in free love now?" You crook a finger derisively at his faded bell-bottoms. "What the hell happened to defying government regulations by shacking up in a van?"

He smirks. "Van got crowded."

Tim Shepard is the worst hippie you've ever seen. His hair has grown out in wild curls that fall down nearly to his chin, and his vest is cut so low that you can see the silver St. Francis medal glinting among the hair on his chest.

He looks like a pirate. The scar does not help.

A girl shrieks with laughter somewhere behind you, and you lean further back against the bricks. The alley behind Kit's apartment building doesn't see a lot of foot traffic, and footsteps throw echoes up against the high walls. You'd heard him coming, but with the sunset still burning in the west and the open door behind you, you figured it was safe enough.

And then Tim rounded the corner. And now you can't help but wonder if there's some kind of lesson in this, a warning from higher powers not to go standing around in deserted alleys and expecting nothing stupid to happen.

Tulsa's leading man in the role of Handsome Sleaze Who Will Shoot You made a lot of waves when he dropped out of everything two years ago and disappeared. The rumor was that he got his draft notice and split, but you have yet to nail down exactly what it was that made Timothy R. Shepard turn from his lifelong passion for violent criminal activity to peace, love, and flying like a dove in the space of a single year.

The first time you saw him at Martine's you punched yourself in the leg. Just to make sure it wasn't a particularly messed up dream.

"You turnin' me down, Ashworth? I'd make an honest woman of you."

He's grinning openly now, waiting for you to get riled, but if he really thinks that's going to happen he's dumber than he currently looks.

"Define honest," you say flatly. You have seen this man hit people with pipes and outrun police officers. You've seen him shoot with the intention of killing other humans. You trust him about as far as you can shove him, which, from the looks of it- Tim has always been rangy and lean- is about three feet.

He pulls out a cigarette and lights up. "Something along the lines of a Texas sundown, I've heard."

"Unpredictable and fleeting? I'm beginning to get some insights into your psyche, here."

Something in that hits home, which catches you by surprise. He leans heavily against the wall and gives you one of those perfectly uninterpretable looks that used to drive your older sister up the wall.

You wonder if he's thinking about her.

"Tim, what are you _doing_?"

It's the first serious thing you've said to him in who knows how long, and for a minute it almost looks like he's going to say something honest back. You can tell by the tilt of his chin, because even though you could never tell shit from his eyes, Tim's thoughts have always come out in the roll of his neck and the shift of his jaw. But then he leans his head back against the wall and you know what's coming next.

"Come on, baby," he says lazily, half-lidded and slick. "Make my capitalist dreams come true."

You have to bite your lip to keep from smirking back.

"Thumbing a ride back to squaresville, are you?"

"Split-level in the 'burbs, babe. Got a white picket fence guy lined up already."

"Be still my beating heart. What the hell are you on?"

"Nothing but what God grew in the good green earth. I ain't fucking around, Jan."

You wait.

He smirks a little. "Well. I'm fucking around less than you think." Takes a drag so long you wonder if he can even feel it anymore. "There's no picket fence guy."

You clutch at your heart to indicate your shock.

"Deceived again," you say dryly and motion for him to give you cigarette. "Whenever will I learn to stop pitching my dumb little heart into your greasy Marxist mitts?"

"Never liked Marx much," he says, which is such bullshit that you couldn't stop your eyes from rolling if you wanted to. If there's a Marxist in Tulsa, it's the long-haired ex-hood slouching against the wall beside you.

You gesture toward him with the cigarette. "So what's the motivation, Stanislavski?"

You keep an eye out to see if he gets that particular reference, but Tim only cocks his head back and smirks skyward. "I figured a girl like yourself wouldn't get in a car with me without legal documentation of honorable intentions."

"So all this is just your fucked up way of asking if I want to go for a ride?"

He grins. "Wanna go for a ride?"

"Can't think of anything else I'd rather do. Oh wait, I just thought of something." You fish in your purse momentarily, pull out your father's old pocket knife, and pop the saw blade out. "Hold on, Tim, I gotta cut my own feet off, this should just take a second-"

And this is the part where you know, despite your better judgment, that you're going to go with him. Because Tim Shepard goes limp against the wall and laughs until he can barely breathe.

"Shit, Ashworth. Maybe I went for the wrong sister. You're a goddamn barrel of fun."

"And you're full of shit as ever."

"So don't marry me."

"Aw, just when I changed my mind."

"Let's go for a ride."

"I have a job, Tim. I have a job and a boyfriend."

"I ain't intending to put either of those at risk, kid. Anybody ever tell you you got a dirty mind?"

You wouldn't take that wormy-ass bait if you were the hungriest trout in the Arkansas. "I mean it. I don't have time for any shit. I got to be home by ten. I work in the morning."

"Got that Laura Petrie future all lined up, huh? You got a heart full of hope, kiddo."

You don't look away, because that would be the same as admitting out loud how much you hate that he knows that. You have never forgiven yourself for telling him even one damn thing about your hopes for the future, even if you were sixteen and stupid enough to think that late nights were a good excuse to confide in people.

You watched too much of the Dick Van Dyke Show during your formative years and Laura Petrie fooled you into thinking you could be eternally young and hip and wear all the right clothes if you could just find the right combination of pep and romance. Tight slacks and constant jokes. All you really wanted. Particularly since you grew up in a house where jokes were not encouraged and you weren't allowed to wear pants even on weekends. Your mother considered half of Mary Tyler Moore's outfits indecent; if she had known your dumb ass had once snuck out to get buzzed off one beer and tell your secret goals to one of your sister's hoodlums her parameters for _indecent_ would have rocketed off the face of the earth.

"We're the same age, jackass," is the best you can come up with to shoot back at Tim, and you don't have to look up to see him curling his lip the way he always does when he's feeling particularly smug. "What were you coming to Kit's for?"

"Wanted to see if Johnny Kirk wanted to go for a ride somewheres. But I like you better than him."

"Oh, lucky me."

"Kirk had some shit to take care of, and then we were gonna maybe swing by Martine's, pick up some enlightened broads."

"Well, there's nothing enlightened women like better than being referred to by mildly derogatory epithets." You finish the cigarette and toss it at his beat-up shoes. "Your roots are showing, flower child."

You're particularly proud of that one, but Tim is too preoccupied with the satisfaction of getting something akin to a rise out of you to acknowledge your wordplay. He shakes a long curl out of his face and winks at you.

Something about the action of Tim Shepard shaking his hair out of his face strikes you as surreal, and you look down at your hands. The sky is bright. It's not dark enough yet to get weirded out about time passing and humans behaving in new and strange ways.

Without another word, Tim pushes off the wall and ambles back down the alley. You watch the bottoms of his jeans brush against the ground as he walks. He stops briefly at the end, laughs but doesn't turn, and throws up a peace sign. You snort, and, in spite of yourself, in spite of all the obvious things you should be doing instead, get up and follow after.

You were expecting the car to be a van. It isn't. It's an old brown Chevy, rusty on the roof, and it's inconspicuous enough to make you suspicious. But you say nothing about that, only watch as Tim gets in, slams the door, and leans slightly out of the open window. He's grinning again. It's almost enough to make you go back to Kit's.

He drums his fingers against the outside of the door. "Ol' Roy won't mind, will he?"

"I'm not with Roy now."

"Really?" He raises his eyebrows slightly, but his voice is bland and slightly mocking. "Why, whatever happened to the Royal?"

That kind of thing would have set you off during the three years of high school that you wasted on Roy, but now you feel nothing. "Roy knocked up a high-schooler. They got married the year after we graduated."

"That explains the feminist rage," he deadpans.

"Right. Nothing to do with the violent oppression of women everywhere. Anyone ever tell you you look like a cartoon pirate?"

He rolls his eyes. "You gettin' in, or what?"

Something in you (like you don't know your mother's voice when you hear it) balks at the idea of getting into the car with him, even if it is daylight, even if he wears different clothes and has different hair. His eyes haven't changed.

Tim was one of those boys who grew up down the street from you, one of those reasons you weren't allowed outside after dark, one of those examples your mother would fling at your sisters when they got tired of trying to study under her endless surveillance.

Her methods worked, inasmuch as such methods do, with Judith and Joanne. They backfired so spectacularly with Jackie that every time your mom started revving up for a good you'll-end-up-a-whore lecture, you just went ahead and unlocked your bedroom window in preparation for Jackie's imminent departure. Mom would run out of breath and Jackie would be off like a shot, right through the window and into Timmy's delinquent little heart.

Your sister is really the only reason you ever had any interaction with Tim as a teenager, back when you were both living in your parent's houses and attending the same school. She is the only reason you don't really fear him, even if you don't trust him. The irony of it is striking; your mother's warnings in one ear and the feeling of Jackie's retroactive protection resting heavy in your chest. Jacqueline Ashworth, patron saint of bad decisions. Pray for us in our hour of stupidity.

You look at Tim, and are struck by the rare experience of knowing exactly what he's thinking: he knows what you're thinking. For a moment the two of you just look at each other, not speaking, not remembering scraping your knees on sidewalks when you were young enough to talk to each other. Not thinking. Not, for the moment, really moving; his fingers are still now. A slight breeze moves through your hair.

The shadows from the buildings behind you have grown out over the street. From where you're standing Tim's eyes look black, but you know if you got up close they would be the same shade of indigo of his brother and sister's.

"You ever think," he says slowly, as he leans back against the seat until you can no longer see his face, "that people can change?"

"No," you say. And you mean it.

But you get in anyway.


End file.
